Currently, various computing system implemented financial management systems are available and implemented by individuals, businesses, financial institutions, such as banks, credit card companies and investment companies. These computing system implemented financial management systems include, but are not limited to: computing system implemented personal and small business financial management systems; computing system implemented tax preparation systems; computing system implemented business accounting systems; and computing system implemented medical expense management systems; as well as various other data driven financial management systems.
Computing system implemented financial management systems typically help users manage their finances by providing a centralized interface with banks, credit card companies, and other various financial institutions, for electronically identifying and categorizing user financial transactions. Currently, computing system implemented financial management systems typically obtain electronic transaction based information, such as payee, payment amount, date, etc. via communication with banks, credit card providers, or other financial institutions, using electronic data transfer systems such as the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) specification, or various other systems for transferring financial transaction data.
Typically a computing system implemented financial management system's ability to identify and categorize specific financial transactions is what allows the computing system implemented financial management system to provide the features that are typically of interest to the user. Typically, the ability to categorize specific financial transactions is, in turn, dependent on an ability of the computing system implemented financial management system to obtain the data necessary to identify and categorize specific financial transactions.
Using some currently available computing system implemented financial management systems, the data necessary to identify and categorize specific financial transactions is obtained directly from the user by manual and/or semi-manual input. Some computing system implemented financial management systems then use this manual user input to learn and categorize future identical, or substantially similar, specific financial transactions in the same category. As an example, if a given transaction having Safeway Stores as the payee is manually categorized by a user as “groceries” a first time, the computing system implemented financial management system may propose a category of groceries for all future financial transactions having Safeway Stores as the payee.
Using some currently available computing system implemented financial management systems, the electronic transaction based information, such as payee, payment amount, date, etc. associated with a specific financial transaction is used by the computing system implemented financial management system to propose a category for a specific financial transaction. As an example, if a given transaction has Safeway Stores as the payee, the computing system implemented financial management system may propose a category of “groceries” for the financial transaction based solely on the payee being a grocery store.
In some instances, a proposed categorization of a specific financial transaction is provided based on what category similar transactions are assigned by a defined percentage of all other users of the computing system implemented financial management system. As an example, if a given transaction has Safeway Stores as the payee, the computing system implemented financial management system may propose a category of “groceries” for the financial transaction based solely on the fact that 51% of all other users of the computing system implemented financial management system categorize financial transactions having this payee as groceries 51% of the time.
While the semi-automatic and/or automatic methods of categorization of financial transactions discussed above may help, they are often inaccurate and fail to take into account any meaningful data regarding the user and a financial transaction with respect to the user. For instance, a financial transaction having a payee of “Home Depot” may, for most users of the computing system implemented financial management system, be correctly automatically categorized as a “home repair” expense. However, when the financial transaction is associated with a user who is a professional plumber it is far more likely that the financial transaction should be categorized as a “business expense”.
Unfortunately, in most cases, the correction of an incorrect semi-automatic and/or automatic categorization of a given financial transaction takes more user time than it would have taken to manually enter the correct categorization of financial transaction in the first place and, experience has shown that, an average user is far more likely to adopt, and continue to use, any computing system implemented financial management system if the amount of manual data entry, i.e., data entry made via any user interface device, such as a keyboard, a mouse, a touch pad, or any other device that requires input from the user, is minimized. Consequently, it is desirable to eliminate as many incorrect semi-automatic and/or automatic categorizations of financial transactions as is possible for at least this reason. In addition, anytime correction of a semi-automatic and/or automatic categorization of financial transaction is required, there is an opportunity for error introduction. Consequently, for this reason as well, it is highly desirable to minimize incorrect semi-automatic and/or automatic categorizations of financial transactions.